Limestone cave and quarry in Gibraltar where Gibraltar 1 Neanderthal found.
Forbes' Quarry is a limestone cave and former quarry on the north face of the Rock of Gibraltar within the Upper Rock Nature Reserve. Nineteenth‑century quarrying here exposed the cave where Captain Edmund Flint discovered the Gibraltar 1 skull of an adult female Neanderthal in 1848, the second Neanderthal fossil ever found.
Forbes' Quarry is a limestone cave and former stone quarry on the northern face of the Rock of Gibraltar, within the Upper Rock Nature Reserve in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The area was quarried during the nineteenth century to supply stone for reinforcing and rebuilding many of the fortress’ military installations, which removed much of the vegetated slope below the cavern and almost destroyed the cave itself. During this quarrying a solutional limestone cave was exposed. In 1848 Captain Edmund Flint of the Royal Navy found an ancient skull inside the cave, later known as the Gibraltar 1 specimen. As secretary of the Gibraltar Museum Society (then the Gibraltar Scientific Society), he presented the skull to the society on 3 March 1848. It was only the second Neanderthal fossil ever discovered. Subsequent study showed it to be the skull of an adult female Neanderthal. The quarry and cave take their name from an eighteenth‑century military installation located directly above the site, known as Forbes’ Battery. The discovery from Forbes’ Quarry became scientifically significant later in the nineteenth century, after Neanderthal remains from Germany’s Neander Valley were recognised as representing the extinct human species Homo neanderthalensis.
